


Flufftober Day 3: “But you said” ~ In Sickness and in Soup

by GuyOfShy



Series: Locked Tomb fics [8]
Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Flufftober, Flufftober 2020, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26792290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuyOfShy/pseuds/GuyOfShy
Summary: Prompt: “But you said”Gideon is sick. Harrow makes soup.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Series: Locked Tomb fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937449
Comments: 3
Kudos: 57
Collections: Flufftober2020





	Flufftober Day 3: “But you said” ~ In Sickness and in Soup

For Harrowhark to doubt her competence and capacity to learn was exceedingly rare. That said, she would have preferred to have the myriad of unsolved necromantic theorems laid out in front of her to solve instead of this little flimsy.

The recipe that Teacher had prescribed her called for vegetables that she had never heard of. Harrow picked what she knew and ignored the rest - which left only carrots - and followed each step with paralyzing trepidation. There was no way in hell that she was doing this right. The soup smelled weird, a little unlike the same soup that they had all been served the day before, and the color looked… off, somehow. She followed the instructions to the best of her ability and placed what little trust she had in Teacher. She carried the porcelain bowl gilded with golden rings and a checkered pattern of white and yellow squares in one hand, and a plain glass of water in her other. The former's garish architecture sickened Harrow more than the idea of consuming her substitute soup.

She snuck her way into the Ninth quarters to find Gideon staring blankly at the ceiling. She had drank a little more water since Harrow had left, which soothed her anxieties on some artificial level.

Gideon watched Harrow enter about an hour sooner than she expected, but did not feel like voicing this quip. Her eyes followed Harrow as she pulled up a chair and sat at her bedside. Harrow awkwardly offered her the bowl while setting the extra glass behind the first.

Gideon rasped, "This won't kill me, will it?"

"Would you like me to taste it myself?" asked Harrow impatiently. "I know bones, Griddle, not the techniques to concoct soup, but I would not serve it to you if I doubted it."

"Relax! I kid." Gideon offered a weak smile as she pushed up and sat back against the headboard.

"Just don’t smell it.”

Hesitating, Gideon smelled it.

“Seems fine to me,” she shrugged.

"I hope your opinion of the taste will match." Harrow’s grim musing did not in any way ease Gideon’s growing worry of the taste.

"Hey, you could have told me "just don't taste it," and then we might have had a real problem."

"Oh, just try it already, would you? We are severely hindered with you being bedridden and I would like to resume pioneering this ruin as soon as humanly possible.”

“Ah, and the truth comes out. You do need me after all,” Gideon grinned.

“When did I ever say that I didn’t?” murmured Harrow somewhat sharply. She stared somewhere at some random spot on the floor, struggling to translate what her heart was imploring her to say. “You are the single driving, compelling force in my life, Gideon. Don’t you dare misplace your import to me again, even as a jest.”

Gideon would have, were she not sick, reached over and hugged Harrow, given her a big, wet smooch, and lifted her off the ground and spun her around. But she couldn’t do those things, and couldn’t figure out how to say “thanks” in a compelling way.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” she said instead, with as much love as she could fill such a hostile word with.

“Just try the fucking soup.”

Good enough. Gideon looked down at the bowl in her lap, not finding the color very pleasing to her eye. Her stomach did not perceive it as tasty and turned. Her body had not quite warmed to the idea of nourishment, being busy fighting an infection, but Gideon scooped the spoon full of soup anyway because she was absolutely not about to miss out on this chance to try her future wife’s cooking.

She brought the spoon to the edge of her lips and - with a very wild look in Harrow’s direction - slurped it obnoxiously loudly.

Harrow just screwed her eyes shut and let out a sigh that trembled with fury.

“I. Hate. You.”

Gideon giggled with the widest smile, absolutely pleased with herself, until some soup slipped down her throat and she sputtered into a coughing fit.

Harrow smiled in turn. “I do not wish ill upon you, but that was well-deserved.”

“As if. Imagine choking to death because you slurped your soup once.”

“A fitting demise for soup slurpers,” mused Harrow. More tenderly: “Now tell me: how is it?”

“Hold on. Let me take another bite, that one didn’t count.”

Gideon drank it silently this time and swallowed carefully. Harrow watched her mull it over, tilting her head and smacking her lips agonizingly slowly a few times.

Gideon nodded with a curious kind of vigor and said, “Yeah, I can see it.”

“…What does that mean?”

“It’s good. Er, not bad, maybe? It’s edible, for sure. Soup good, me like.” Gideon gave a thumbs up while swallowing another spoonful. “Feel better already!”

“You’ve never been very good at lying.”

“I’m noht wying!” Gideon said with an angry mouthful of soup. “You’ve just never been very good at accepting compliments. Try this one on for size: somehow it feels weirder to be served soup by my hot goth GF with skull paint on than an actual skeleton.”

“You’ll choke again if you keep talking.”

“‘A fitting demise’, was it?”

“I won’t let you die by soup," Harrow huffed flatly. "Especially not soup of my own creation. I'm just relieved that it is edible, at the least."

"Real talk?" hummed Gideon while stirring the soup, on the hunt for more slices of carrots. "I honestly think I'd rather eat this over whatever we were served before. So thanks, Harrow."

“I did not expect my culinary skills to be praised today. That said: don't thank me. Just get better."

“Workin’ on it,” Gideon said, showing off another spoonful swallowed. Harrow realized she was sat still and watching with a stern stare, like a mother making sure her child ate their veggies.

"What do I do now?"

"Whaddya mean?"

"Are… is there anything else I can help with?" asked Harrow clumsily and under her breath, as if utilizing a new language in real conversation for the first time.

“Harrow, go - I don’t know - search for traces of tampering with the rooms, or something. It’s not like you to sit around wasting time.”

Truthfully, Harrow deeply feared leaving this room without her cavalier at her side. She realized in a surfeit of shyness that Gideon realized this already, and her suggestion spoke to her faith in Harrow’s abilities to fend for herself.

Gideon raised a finger, seeing that Harrow was short-circuiting. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that I do get all better after eating this soup. What would you have us do? Search for new trial rooms or complete the ones we’ve found already?”

“I want to kiss you,” said Harrow hurriedly.

“Okay - same - but don’t do that.”

“But you said-”

“Forget what I said. Look, don’t worry your pretty little gray head over me. It’s weird. And I’ll be fine anyway. You know as well as I do that I’ve never been bedridden by a sickness for too long. Even now I could get up, come on get down with the sickness as well as I please.”

“I will take that as my cue to leave,” sighed Harrow, standing in a fluttering of robes and shaking her head as she left; to where, even she did not know.

“Love you, hon!” called Gideon after her, loving that repressed silence she emanated back.


End file.
